When is your money not your money?

[Filo]

When the European Finance ministers tell you!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/16/cyprus-eurozone-bailout-anger

[Dagenham Rover]

Glad I owe the Bank rather than the other way round

[The Red Baron]

As well as being legally dubious and morally wrong, it is a policy that is likely to be self-defeating. I mean, who would now want to keep their hard-earned in a bank in the eurozone, especially if you're in a country like Greece, Italy or Spain- you could be next!

It would make more sense to transfer your money into a bank outside of the eurozone, or, if you can't do that, take it out of the bank and put it in a safe- or even an old mattress- at home. Both add up to the same- a run on the banks and their eventual collapse. Surely precisely the thing that the EU wants to avoid.

[Filo]

As well as being legally dubious and morally wrong, it is a policy that is likely to be self-defeating. I mean, who would now want to keep their hard-earned in a bank in the eurozone, especially if you're in a country like Greece, Italy or Spain- you could be next!

It would make more sense to transfer your money into a bank outside of the eurozone, or, if you can't do that, take it out of the bank and put it in a safe- or even an old mattress- at home. Both add up to the same- a run on the banks and their eventual collapse. Surely precisely the thing that the EU wants to avoid.

I`m by no means an expert on all this financial gobbledy gook, but would it make sense for the UK banks to try and attract some of this money that may get invested outside of the Eurozone?

[The Red Baron]

I think it would be difficult politically while we remain members of the EU. Also, UK banks have some quite serious liabilities within the eurozone so it would not be in their interests to see any eurozone banks collapse. I doubt US and Far East banks will have such problems though!

I see Osborne has (rightly IMO) said that forces personnel and government workers who lose money will be compensated by the UK government. Maybe the government should recover their costs from our EU contributions.

[Glyn_Wigley]

The EU aren't imposing anything on anybody. It's the choice of the Cypriot government to go with the offer of the EU help package, even considering the price tag attached. There's nothing to stop them refusing and going elsewhere.

I bet none of the usual Europhobes would want US to give Cyprus a free help package, but would also want some similar sort of guarantees out of it; but I bet that's not what you'll hear out of them.

[River Don]

Simple lesson here.

Buy gold.

If you can't afford gold buy silver.

Don't trust the bank.

[Glyn_Wigley]

That's all very well until you get stiffed by the buying commission and then the selling commission on top...

[BillyStubbsTears]

As well as being legally dubious and morally wrong, it is a policy that is likely to be self-defeating. I mean, who would now want to keep their hard-earned in a bank in the eurozone, especially if you're in a country like Greece, Italy or Spain- you could be next!

It would make more sense to transfer your money into a bank outside of the eurozone, or, if you can't do that, take it out of the bank and put it in a safe- or even an old mattress- at home. Both add up to the same- a run on the banks and their eventual collapse. Surely precisely the thing that the EU wants to avoid.

TRB

Agreed.

This is bloody lunacy. This has more or less guaranteed that the next time an Italian or Spanish politician gives the slightest hint that a bank bailout might be needed, there will be utter carnage.

This is the sort of decision that could well set the whole avalanche off, just as Draghi had got the ECB doing the right thing to settle the jitters over the EZ sovereign debts.

Wolfgang Schaueble, the German Finance Minister is running a huge gamble here. He's forced this measure through so that, when the German elections come up in September, he can look like the big hard man giving the feckless Dagos, Wops and Greeks the what-for. But he has broken the Cardinal Rule of faith in banks. That small savers' money is safe when they put it into banks. Shareholders can lose their investment - that's tough shit. Bond holders ditto. But if savers think they might lose their money, that is a catastrophe.

I thought that the EZ crisis was containable, but this idiot might well have just got his lighter out in the powder magazine.

[Filo]

Cyprus are not allowing banks to open until at least Tuesday of next week to try and prevent a run on deposits, to me they are only delaying the inevitable, once the banks open the money will pour out. The Cypriot government and the EU finance ministers have not helped at all in trying to calm nerves, instead they`ve fuelled the inevitable panic.